It could be raining diamonds on numerous other worlds

It was only last month that we learned that ‘fountains of diamonds’ could be sent shooting up to the surface of the Earth as part of a major geological event.

Now, it’s been revealed that diamond rain is far more common on other planets than you might think.

A new study, published in Nature Astronomy, has revealed that extreme weather conditions involving precious stone precipitation could be relatively common out there in space – not least within Neptune’s atmosphere.

Scientists have studied the processes behind diamond formation, and they’ve found that while diamonds still need vast amounts of pressure and incredibly high temperatures to make them, the conditions required aren’t as extreme as first thought.

It means that plenty of gas planets dubbed “mini-Neptunes” could feature diamond rain – the very idea of which is pretty hard to comprehend.

NASA/Creative Commons

Siegfried Glenzer from the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory said about the findings: "This groundbreaking discovery not only deepens our knowledge of our local icy planets, but also holds implications for understanding similar processes in exoplanets beyond our Solar System.”

As well as helping us understand more about the unique weather systems of ice planets, the findings could also help to explain why Neptune and Uranus’s magnetic fields differ to the symmetric field Earth has.

Mungo Frost, from the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, said: "It might kick off movements within the conductive ices found on these planets, influencing the generation of their magnetic fields.”

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